Pizza is tasty

So you can can thank our apartment complex’s new management for this
week’s email because they decided to remove the wireless internet from
the apartment clubhouse.

What does that mean you ask? It means that the computers are down,
which in turn means I that I am typing this email from a workout room
sitting on a bench press, with my iPad.

If anyone has tried typing with an iPad they will know that to do so
is like trying to play pin the tail on the donkey with a touchscreen
in a high speed car chase while having a seizure. It doesn’t work.

The only reason why I am even able to connect to the Internet right
now is because I happen to have magically obtained the password to the
management’s office Internet. They can’t win heehee. (It was totally
legal mom don’t worry)

You could say that if I had written in my electronic journal this week
this email wouldn’t be so hard but why blame myself when I can blame
someone else.

Ok, sorry about that rant.

In terms of numbers, this was quite possibly one of the worst weeks of
my mission. It was however not one of the worst weeks of my mission. I
think that almost everything that could have gone wrong went wrong
this week but honestly I’m not even mad.

We met some awesome people this week, had an awesome time at General
Conference and I learned a ton.

Part of the reason this week was hard though was because no joke I
spent probably 14 hours trying to fix Elder H.’s bike and man that
thing just likes being broken. I ended up stubbornly taking it to a
bike shop and I feel a lot better now because the bike shop called us
and they are struggling to get the piece of junk to work.

While I was trying to fix this bike, a guy named P. offered to help
us with it. He didn’t know too much about bikes but he had a ton of
tools and he wanted to help. The bike wasn’t fixed but we ended up
talking to him for a while about our church and he knew a lot of
Mormons. In fact, he had talked to the Sandhills elders before about
our church and he was interested in learning more about what we
believe in, although he flat out said that we couldn’t convert him. He
asked if he could hire us to move him out because he was about to move
to New York. We of course told him that we do that sort of thing for
free but he refused to accept what he called “slave labor” so we
agreed that he would take us out to dinner in turn. We had no idea
what would follow.

Moving P. out was really easy. Him and his girlfriend didn’t have
too much stuff and honestly it wasn’t hard at all. We started to
realize that P. wanted us around not just because we were a help
but because he felt good around us and liked to talk to us. He
admitted that later and we was like “yo P. that’s the Spirit.” That
night we taught him, his girlfriend, and one of his friends the
Restoration at Sonic and you could tell that it touched them. Though
they never admitted it, I think they would be open to listening to
missionaries up in New York someday.

Here’s the other part to the story, P. knew how much money we live
off of and he wanted to help us in some way. He ended up buying us
Costco boxes of hot pockets, granola bars, and each of us 17 razors.
Yes, 17. We didn’t ask for anything and in fact we felt bad, but him
and his girlfriend said that they were doing it because they felt good
and happy inside for helping us out. Little did they know that was the
spirit of charity.

We spent a lot of time with P., and all for one lesson. That shows,
however, that numbers mean nothing, because that lesson meant a lot
for them, for us, and I’m sure for God. The people that you get to
meet on your mission are amazing, and it truly shows you the worth of
souls. If here in South Carolina, in a random apartment complex in
Blythewood, there are cool people like P., then how many amazing
people are there everywhere else in the world? The world still has
good people.

I have no idea if P. will ever be baptized, but I can tell you for
certain that we changed each other’s lives.

Work with our investigators this week was not the greatest. We ended
up clearing out our area book and we struggled getting ahold of our
solid investigators this week, probably because it’s spring break.

General conference was AWESOME. Honestly I appreciate it so much more
out here than I did back home. I really enjoyed all of the talks and
it seemed like the general authorities were being much more bold with
the world, and I like that. I also really liked President Uchdorf’s
comment about Chewbacca in the priesthood session. Honestly it seems
like there was a lot more informality in this conference than any
other. I really liked Elder Holland’s talk during the last session, and
I really enjoyed Elder Nelson’s talk during the priesthood session. I
seriously learned a ton from this conference. It was amazing.

I don’t remember which talk it was, but one of the apostles mentioned
the scripture 1 Nephi 2:12, which made me really happy because I love
using that scripture. What I love about it is particularly when it
says that Laman and Lemuel murmured because they “knew not the
dealings of that God who had created them.” We can know of the
dealings of God through the Book of Mormon. In fact, the introduction
to the Book of Mormon states that it is a “record of God’s dealings
with ancient inhabitants of the Americas,” so the Book of Mormon is
literally the dealings of God. We can literally know more of what God
has in store for us or his “dealings” with us by listening to and
following His prophets and apostles, as well as learning from God’s
past dealings with the ancient Americans.

Anyway, that’s my week. My fingers are sore from typing this and I am
hungry, in case you were wondering. Until next week,